Dr. Peter Horsfield is an ordained minister in the
Uniting Church in Australia. He is currently employed on the Electronic
Culture Research Project, a special initiative of the Uniting Church's
Commission in Victoria to explore the impact of electronic media on global
cultures and the implications of this cultural change on religious institutions
and on the social experience and expression of religious faith. For ten
years previously he was the Dean of the Uniting Church's Theological Hall
and Lecturer in Practical Theology in the United Faculty of Theology in
Melbourne. He has published extensively in the areas of mass communication
and society and media, religion and culture. Among his publications are
two books: Religious Television: The American Experience (Longmans 1984)
and Taming the Television: A Parents' Guide to Children and Television
(Albatross 1986). This appeared originally in Research, 1991, monograph on the genesis and ethos of public service campaigns; principles and case studies. In yet different form appeared as "Selling Consent," Communication and Citizenship. Eds. P. Dahlgren and C. Sparks. London: Routledge, 1991. The sociological and public policy implications of establishment information compliance campaigns.

Redefining the religious

Traditionally the scientific study of religion had been limited to those
aspects of life and culture explicitly linked with belief in a supernatural
being or forces. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, for example, proposed
that the study of religion is concerned with "the traditional acts
and observances, regarded by the natives as sacred, carried out with reverence
and awe, hedged around with prohibitions and special rules and behaviour.
Such acts and observances are always associated with beliefs in supernatural
forces." [1948, 17]

In recent years, however, there have been substantial changes within
the scientific study of religion to include non-theistic systems of belief
and ritual within its scope. The "functional" approach to the
scientific study of religion, for example, identifies a particular behaviour
as "religious" not necessarily by its supernatural referent,
but rather by the distinctively "religious" functions being served
by that behaviour.

Underlying this approach is the assumption that human beings are inescapably
religious in the sense that we continually find ourselves in situations
where decisions and actions involve unprovable "faith" assumptions.
Because a person's philosophy does not include a supernatural element does
not mean they cease to be religious in a functional sense. The question
is not whether one is religious or not: it is in what ways is one religious
and on what assumptions are one's religious ideas and behaviour based.

The problem in such an approach, of course, is how to define clearly
the nature of the religious. Many different attempts have been made to
effect such a redefinition from a functional perspective. The approach
followed here is that of the philosopher David Tracy. Tracy identifies
as religious those ideas and behaviour which reflect what he calls a "limit"
quality: religious behaviour is that by which humans seek to adapt to,
cope with, or understand dimensions of life beyond their explanation, prediction
or control.[1975, 99FF] It is when we find ourselves in situations in which
we must go beyond our human ability to explain sensorily, to predict, or
to control the situation that our religious beliefs and behaviour come
to be manifested.

Sociologist Milton Yinger suggests that in the absence of the generally
readily identifiable super-natural referent, the most effective way to
identify the operative religious faiths in society is through their ritualistic
expressions. In his The Scientific Study of Religion, [1970, 17] he says,
"I am inclined to say, Look for rituals first, then for the beliefs
connected with them; there you will find the operating religion of an individual
or group."

Some initial work has been done on teasing out elements of Australian
folk religion. In this paper I suggest that television needs to be considered
seriously as an operative religious activity for a large proportion of
the Australian population. That does not mean that the television industry
would see itself in religious terms nor that people, if questionned, would
say they use television as a religious substitute. But when one applies
criteria of critical analysis, the correspondence between the content and
uses of television and traditional religious practices is significant.

This proposition is examined in terms of the three universal expressions
or functions of religious faith, whether theistic or non-theistic: the
practical, or the system of worship or ritual; the sociological, or the
system of social relationships; and the theoretical, or the system of beliefs.

The practical expression: ritual and worship

There are many rituals associated with the use of mass media, but the
ritualistic nature of television in modern society is perhaps the most
readily identifiable. The loyalty which television has been able to elicit
from its adherents is more pervasive than perhaps any other single social
phenomenon in human history.

Television now consumes more time and attention of more people than
all other media and leisure activities combined. In the process it has
displaced in a significant way time once spent on other apparently important
human activities such as social gatherings away from home, interpersonal
interactions, and active participation in leisure activities.

Traditionally, the rituals of religion were identified as serving the
major function of transcending present profane time. The ritual act withdraws
us from the ordinary world of mortality and limitation into a special space,
time and action in which the mundane and finite is transformed into something
of eternal quality.

There are several characteristics which identify television as a substitute
ritual for overcoming the profanity of everyday life.

Studies show that the major uses of television by the public are for
entertainment, escape, and the filling of vacant time. Television in this
regard blends complementarily with the present economic structures and
sociological dynamics of Western technological and industrial society.
Television has found a significant role in anaesthetizing the unresolved
frustrations and fatigue arising out of the disjunctive life-style of much
of the late 20th century Western society.

One of the main attributes of television is its repetitiveness, a significant
parallel to liturgical practices which intuitively developed a similar
aspect. The repetitive, ritualistic patterns of viewing provide a structure
to life which may be considered as fulfilling a similar function to cultic/religious
affirmations of a theistic divine order. Whether it be the inculcated desire
to keep up with the progress of particular soap operas or sporting events,
or the guilt felt when missing the evening news or serious documentaries,
the effect is similar. Television has come to order our lives in such a
way that it becomes gratifying to live in harmony with the order imposed
by this thing beyond.

We have become so inundated and saturated with news and information
that the content of what we see or hear makes little difference. It is
the ritual of hearing and seeing that has become satisfying. As Thoreau
noted:

I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we
read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house
burnt, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run
over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed -- we never need read
of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what
do you care for .. ....myriad instances and applications?

I would suggest that this social ritualism of television and its social
implications will never be fully understood until its religious characteristics
also are examined.

Channel 0 in Brisbane provides an illustration of this structural function
of television. In a recent promotional spot, it showed a variety of people
in boring, everyday situations -- an office worker at her desk, a woman
walking along the street, an old woman struggling with parcels. Their lives
were suddenly sparked by an encounter with the Channel 0 news team: the
woman in the office receiving a beatific vision of the Channel 0 helicopter
outside her office window; the one on the street seeing the News team at
work; and the old woman being given help with her parcels by the Channel
0 news anchor. The ritual is extended! The promo ends with a woman returning
safe again to the womb of her home, turning on to Channel 0, settling back,
and hearing the words of a hymn (sorry, song) "Channel 0, you are
the biggest part of me."

One does not need to watch for long to note the similarity of formats
used and the development of identifiable sub-rituals: news, current affairs,
sports, soap operas, situation comedies, drama, and the mini series.

What characterises all of these genres is the absence of demand. Demand
and work are characteristics of the profane. Television transcends the
profane by providing a media ritual which is at the same time engaging
yet free of effort.

The sociological expression: relating meaningfully to the environment

Another traditional function of religion is that of providing a system
of meaningful social interaction, particularly in the field of defining
taboos and reinforcing those mores without which social organisation would
disintegrate.

In today's society there are two major threats to social maintenance:
the abrasions of intensified social living and the frustrations of unrealised
expectations.

Last century Marx criticised religion as being the opiate of the masses
because it suppressed radical challenge to the system. Because it provided
a supernatural rationale for the system as it was, and moral constraints
by which dissatisfaction with the system could be managed, Marx claimed
that religion suppressed genuine social change.

Today television may be challenged as being the opiate of the 20th century
fatigued person. (This suggestion is not new. In the 1950's, Paul Lazarsfeld
suggested that one of the major social effects of the mass media is what
he called their narcotising dysfunction effect.)

Supernatural or theistic religion generally used a supernatural imprimatur
for justifying the existing mores despite their discrepancies. Television
has, as a secular tool, largely rejected the concept of God, but in the
place of God television substitutes the larger economic order, and like
the Christian religion has created its own "super-natural" agents
or saints to help maintain and represent this order.

Television has a key stake in maintaining the present social system.
Its owners are people who are successful within the system, who are key
power brokers in the system, and whose livelihood is dependent on the system
continuing as it is.

The main tools of television were not the characteristic religious ones
of mystery, revelation and tradition, but fantasy and humour. Television
presents and interprets factual and fictional stories in such a way that
challenges to the integrity of the status quo are effectively managed.

An important element of this process is the supernatural hero. Like
the saints of Christendom, television's heroes are identifiable and continuing
characters who, while participating in our human situation, also successfully
overcome its abrasions, anxieties and threats, thus reinforcing the integrity
of the system. There are two identifiable expressions of the super-natural
television hero: the dramatic and the comedic.

The dramatic hero is one for whom the tensions, dreads and abrasions
of life do not exist. The message is: How can we dare to questions the
established order when there are some who obviously are unaffected by it!
Two forms of the dramatic hero can be identified.

The first is the news anchorperson. It is easy to underestimate the
significant symbolic function which the news anchorperson fulfils in our
present society. Not only is he or she the means by which we receive news
of breakdowns in our social organisation; he or she is also the guarantor
of the system despite these breakdowns. Like a calm school principal handling
a minor disturbance, the news anchor has it all under control. As the world
seems to be falling apart, as crisis piles upon crisis, the anchorperson
is totally unmoved by it. As the news has threatened to untie the system,
the anchorperson is the one who at the ends ties it all back together again.
Walter Cronkite, long-time anchor for CBS News in the U.S., used to finish
each news program with the words, "And that's the way it is: Thursday,
3rd May, 1976. Goodnight!"

The second form of dramatic hero is the crime, drama, or sports hero.
He or she is the person, very often a continuing character with whom we
are encouraged to establish a vicarious relationship, who faces and overcomes
threat or challenge and emerges, often bloodied, but always victorious.
Whether it be Clint Eastwood in any of his many roles, Jennifer Carson
on Carson's Law, the team on The Professionals, or Michael Kusak on L.A.
Law, the essence of the role is that they are people who, like the Christian
saints, struggle with the kinks in the system and resist the outward or
inward threats to the economic faith and emerge triumphant epitomes of
power, integrity and self-control. If they can do it, the message goes,
so can you!

Television is adept at handling minority challenges in this way. When
a deprived group raises its voice in objection, television responds by
creating a suitable hero: a Mexican-American lawyer on L.A. Law, a female
professional, a television evangelist. The message is the same yet again:
how can you question the system when there are obviously people like you
who succeed in it! Such a device is certainly an effective way of managing
social change. In the process, however, the essence of the minority criticism
tends to be reduced and deflated so that structural change to the system
needs no further consideration.

For those who are unable to measure up to the stringent example of the
dramatic hero, television embodies its own style of forgiveness and reconciliation
in the form of the comedic hero. The hero of comedy, in contrast to the
dramatic hero, is the one who fails and becomes entangled or submerged
in the pitfalls of the taboo, but who also demonstrates the socially acceptable
way of being restored to "divine" respectability. Whether it
is in the area of family problems, as in Cosby or Mother and Son, race
relations and childhood preciousness as in Different Strokes, or chauvinistic
ockerism as in Kingswood Country, the comedic hero reassures us of the
presence of a divine guarantor by embodying our fears and facilitating
their catharsis.

The similarities between all supernatural heroes of television lie in
the narrowing of their personalities in line with the efficient fulfilling
of the required task and their general reaffirmation of the status quo.
Their answer to the abrasions of modern life is thus, again, to be found
in unquestionning adaptation to the established order, not in change.

The philosophic expression: a basis for common belief

The third of the major functions of traditional religious faith is to
provide a body of belief structures which serve to harmonise the many disparate
ideas, experiences and institutions within society in such a way that individual
as well as corporate needs and aspirations are given expression. Today,
that function is performed for many by television -- through shared ritual,
stereotypes and consistent mythologies.

There is perhaps no social institution better equipped to provide a
basis for common belief than television. It is more ubiquitous, more centrally
administered, more attractive and more compelling than any other social
medium.

It is also international. One of the best kept secrets and one of the
major preoccupations of Western countries in the northern summer of 1980
was not the US presidential elections, but the question relating to the
program Dallas: "Who shot JR?" One mid-Atlantic French flight
interrupted its passengers to give them the answer as soon as it had been
revealed on the program. When MASH broadcast its final episode, parties
were held across the US to bring friends of MASH together to mourn its
passing. (Personally, I wish I could have been there!)

But television's belief system is different from other religious belief
systems. Most religious faiths are based on a revelatory event or on a
significant content or meanings, either cognitive or experiential, which
serve to organise human experience. Common belief or fellowship communities
often become organised around these shared meanings.

In television, the faith assumption that underlies television's message
that we are urged to accept and respond to is that the sponsoring system
is able to meet all human need. This economic order is fundamental.

Withon this overarching belief structure, the emphasis is not on normative
content or meaning, but on accumulating people to sell to advertisers.
The content of television is totally subservient to this purpose. Television's
philosophy is reductionist. The common denominator, out of which it builds
a philosophy and which most coincides with the requirements of its financiers,
is human enjoyment. Its basic mode is entertainment, even in presenting
such unlikely entertainment as human suffering and tragedy.

That television is effective in creating or extending common belief
patterns among viewers is demonstrated by research. Studies show consistently
that heavy viewers of television begin to reflect the perceptions and myths
which television subtly propogates. Television constantly presents and
reinforces the following beliefs:

* Success in life is best measured by one's possessions and power. Less
tangible qualities such as depth of character, personal integrity, or quality
of relationships find little place.

* The world is an increasingly violent place, and one is justified in
protecting oneself by the adoption of violence also.

* Social violence is basically irrational, not a reaction to resolvable
social conditions.

* Happiness lies primarily in acquiring goods and services, not in developing
personal goals and relationships.

* There is greater worth in being young, male, and white than in being
old, female, or coloured.

* Finding easy ways to avoid one's problems is more desirable than resolving
them through disciplined and intelligent effort.

* Most of life's pressing problems have simple solutions, and those
solutions are generally found in the purchase of a product, the passing
of a law, or the application of a technology.

One could easily identify others, or go into more detail in these. The
important thing is that television is laying the foundations of a consistent
and integrated system of belief which fails to reflect the diversity of
social reality but which is consistent with the economic system which has
given it birth and serves the needs not primarily of people in society
but of its corporate managers.

It is interesting to note, therefore, that an increasing number of advertisers,
particularly the multi-national conglomerates, are presenting themselves
in terms whose double meanings have religious dimensions of omniscience
(all-knowledge) and omnipotence (all-power), such as

Coke: "Coke is it!"

General Electric: "We brings good things to life."

Sanyo: "I said, That's life! Sanyo."

MacDonalds: "We do it all for you."

The more the mass media come to be controlled by large corporate conglomerates
which have broad social interests and world-wide organisations, and which
all serve the one economic system, the more this will become the case.

The danger is that because meanings and purpose are significant motivators
of human activity and creativity, the consequences of television's functionning
as a religious phenomenon may not be social motivation but acquiescence
in the status quo. Two factors contribute to this.

One is that a significant effect of television's violent content may
be not increased aggression, but the magnification of fear and social anxiety.
A major effect of television's "religious" functionning may be
a greater willingness of people to abnegate their individual social responsibility
and acquiescence to totalitarian figures and institutions who appear more
able to handle the perceived increasingly chaotic social situation.

A further effect may be that of an increased consumerist attitude: the
belief that my needs and my wants have ultimate importance and validity.
While such a philosophy may serve well while the attraction and possibility
of improving one's lot are viable, as a social philosophy it has few resources
for dealing with unavoidable deprivation or frustration, human finitude,
sacrifice, or the search for justice.

This religious nature of television content and use is posing a challenge
to established religious bodies. People's conditionning in consumerism
in subtle ways is changing the theological concept of faith, so that in
certain theologies God is seen not so much as the object of service and
obedience but as a convenient device by which one's religious needs are
met. It is interesting to note in this regard the growth of large churches
whose approach is that of offering what amounts to a "comprehensive
religious service" to what has become an increasingly discriminating
and mobile religious clientele.

As mentioned earlier, I am not suggesting that the mass media would
see themselves in such religious terms, nor that the mass media could be
conceived as replacing theistic religion. But in the syncretistic way in
which people today put together their own religious belief and life-style
packages in ways that meet their individual needs, the mass media in their
characteristic uses and contents are becoming a significant component of
those belief systems. They are meeting needs and fulfilling some of the
functions which people once found in theistic religion, and in the process
are modifying some traditional expressions of religious faith.